Add-ons Manager Search Results Now Limited to Fully Reviewed Add-ons

Having a wide variety of content on addons.mozilla.org has always been a top priority for us, which is why some years ago we decided that we needed two different levels of acceptance for the add-ons we host and distribute. Fully reviewed add-ons meet all of our quality standards, while preliminarily reviewed add-ons only have to meet a lower standard, focused mostly on security and privacy. This gives developers the liberty to distribute experimental and not-quite-ready add-ons, and gather user feedback as they work on them.

Naturally, we make both review levels easily distinguishable on AMO, giving fully reviewed add-ons the usual green install button, while preliminarily reviewed add-ons have a stripped yellow button. We also give fully reviewed add-ons higher precedence on search results and most other places.

Unfortunately, we never implemented this distinction in the Firefox Add-ons Manager. This meant that users were able to find and install preliminarily reviewed add-ons without any indication of their review level. Since we believe this can be detrimental for the majority of our users, we decided to limit Add-ons Manager search results to fully reviewed add-ons. This is a server side change, so it applies to all versions of Firefox.

If you’re interested in trying more experimental add-ons, you can always find them on AMO.

Yes, that was the original plan. But it hasn’t materialized yet, so we went with what we though was the second best option. Hopefully we will eventually have a way to tell them apart and make them available through the Add-ons Manager again.

What is involved in getting fully reviewed? Is it just a matter of time, or is it requested when ready?

A more important indicator than review, might be user feed back. There does not seem to be a way to flag an extension, other than by public comments, to indicate a severe bug, or that it has stopped working with the current firefox.